Do you have memories of long hours spent in video arcades, slowly becoming desensitized to the flashing lights, the boops, the beeps, the whistles and wails? Of endlessly trying to get the change machine to take that last crumpled dollar, to give you four more games before it was time to head home? Or maybe for you it was a dark-wood-paneled basement at your best friend’s house, where you played an Atari 2600, a Colecovision, or, God forbid, a Commodore 64. Raise your hand if you know what a TI99/4A was, and took shit from your friends because you had to play a knock-off version of Pac-Man known as Munch Man. If any of these references mean anything to you, Seth Gordon’s debut feature documentary may have particular resonance. What’s more remarkable is that even if you’ve never so much as eaten a single ghost in a game of Ms. Pac-Man, King of Kong is still a remarkable (and remarkably hilarious) film.

The setup is a documentarian’s wet dream: lifetime also-ran loses his job, spends all his newfound free time in the garage playing a classic video game and discovers he might just be the best at something after all. Meanwhile, the arrogant, world famous jerk he seeks to supplant schemes and connives to keep our hero from his goal. A David vs. Goliath competition drama like this usually has to be carefully (and generally unbelievably) scripted, but in this case all the unlikely events unfold for real.

Which is not to discount the talents of Gordon, the director. The saga of Steve Wiebe, a Washington State engineer whose pink slip from Boeing on the day he and his wife close on their new home is pretty much a fitting metaphor for his whole life, and Billy Mitchell, the most celebrated (and unrepentantly egotisical) video game player in history, may be tailor-made for the screen, but it’s Gordon’s deft touch that makes the film such a treat. Part of that may be his background in fiction films. King of Kong‘s footage may be real, but its editing is always in service to the story. Which sometimes causes the narrative to play fast and loose with the facts, but documentary filmmaking isn’t journalism: there’s a difference between reporting a story and telling one, and the priority in a documentary is the latter. Gordon’s other priority is laughter, and he succeeds on both counts.